Facebook Home is neat, but Tasker Home would be awesome!

I’ve already written a lengthy piece about my opinion on Facebook Home. While I think it’s great idea, I don’t use Facebook myself, and frankly hate the company. What I don’t hate, however, is Tasker, and I think that there would be a lot of potential in a Tasker Home Android launcher.

When people ask what phone I have, I’m always tempted to say “Tasker.” The truth is that my phone is more Tasker than Android at this point, and I know others in the same situation. Despite it being so central to my Android experience, however, it has far less impact on my launcher and lock screen than I would like. Sure, I have both shortcuts for launching tasks and widgets for displaying info from Tasker there, but there’s still a lot of things that could only be achieved through a launcher made specifically for Tasker.

As an example, take Tasker’s scene system, which allows you to create your own interfaces for apps and other uses. Imagine what you could do with that and a launcher! Forget about that stupid Google search bar, you could put a TextEdit field right there on the home screen and tie it to whatever you wanted. Brightness slider on the home screen? No problem. Dedicated home screen for home automation controls, with sliders for dimming, sensor info, and so on? Sure!

You could use scene elements to launch apps, and in the process gain the ability to have any size image or text you want for the icon, without having to use widget workarounds. You could also change the scene elements using tasks, and for instance create dynamic icons that change depending on various conditions: have icons light up when there are new notifications, have the email icon link to different email clients depending on whether or not your work profile is active or not, or dynamically switch the music icon from pointing to a streaming service to pointing to a local music player depending on your network connection. All things that are perfectly possible with today’s Tasker scene system, it just isn’t available as a launcher.

This would also allow you to create completely different home screens depending on various situations, similar to what some launchers already do, but roughly 253.81 million times more powerful. You could literally create your own apps using the scene system, and use those as home screen pages, then switch them based on various conditions. What about having your own custom app for tracking working hours, that is automatically put front and center when you come to work, and then disappear by itself once you’ve filled in the data? Or what about placing every driving related app and widget you have on a custom home screen, and then activating it with a Bluetooth Connected context to your car stereo?

None of the random examples above are in any way far fetched, and most of the functionality is already in Tasker. Turning it into a launcher, however, would be a ton of work, and I don’t see the Tasker developer going down that route. Heck, I don’t even know if it’s possible to merge the scene system into a launcher like that! Aside from the work with creating the launcher format, you would also need the ability to implement other widgets and shortcuts into the system, which can’t be easy. Moreover, this would be far more advanced than Tasker itself, as it would only truly become useful once you’re at the level where you create your own scenes and whatnot- which a minority of Tasker’s users are at.

So, bottom line, I don’t see this as very likely to happen. That doesn’t mean I can’t wish for it to happen, and I do think that it would be multiple steps above epic. Once you know how to use Tasker properly, your phone is no longer an ordinary Android phone, and a Tasker Home launcher would just give the final killing blow to what’s left of stock Android on devices like that.

About the Author

Andreas Ødegård was an associate editor at Pocketables. He's more interested in aftermarket (and user created) software and hardware than chasing the latest gadgets and tends to stick with his choice of device for a long time as a result of that. Currently that includes an iPad mini and a Samsung Galaxy S II.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9787157/joaomgcd.html joaomgcd

Would be awesome if this happened!

William Devereux

Forget apps, let’s make everything into a launcher! Home. ;)

On a more serious note, however, this would definitely be nice for Tasker users.

Capt4chris

Those are some cool ideas there! I just got Tasker during the sale so I’m still learning what it can do through your guides. Thanks for posting!

SPJ

Andreas I believe some of the things you mention in this article are already possible. You just need some other software. Anything lockscreen related could (theoretically) be achieved with Tasker in combination with Widget Locker and anything homescreen related could (again theoretically) be done with Tasker and Nova Launcher. I’ve been doing things like this recently with Tasker as I used to use Tasker as a tool to get rid of unnecessary apps. Since I started messing around with scenes I’ve been looking for ways to integrate Tasker with other apps.

Andreas Ødegård

I’ve written articles on both using Widget Locker and Tasker and making entire lock screens in Tasker, but it’s not the same as something that works from scratch. As for Nova, I haven’t tried it, but I very seriously doubt that you have anything that even closely remembers direct editing of scenes on the home screen page. Widgets and Go Home with page support isnt anywhere close to what I’m talking about here.

SPJ

I’m confused by your comment. As far as the Lockscreen I don’t understand what “works from scratch” means. As far as ” I very seriously doubt that you have anything that even closely remembers direct editing of scenes on the home screen page”, if that’s not a typo I don’t know what that means. If it’s supposed to say “resembles” then I don’t understand why you would need to directly edit from the home screen when you could edit it via Tasker.

Andreas Ødegård

You’re right, it was a typo. I wasn’t really referring to the editing of scenes, but rather having home screen pages that ARE scenes. That still begs the question of what you’re referring to with Nova launcher that actually has anything to do with scenes?

SPJ

O ok. I haven’t actually gone as far with Nova yet as I have with Widget Locker. However, I have found that Nova makes my experience with Tasker much easier. I’m moving rather slow with this experiment as I’m only doing it for me so there is no rush. Right now I’m just using app icons in addition to Tasker. Nova allows you to assign swipe actions for any icon. So in essence a Tasker shortcut created in Nova could do a lot. The ability to use a tap action and the swipe action for one icon provides some interesting possibilities IMHO

Andreas Ødegård

Interesting, I’ll have to look into that. I use multi-function icons on my scenes, so makes sense to put them on the home screen as well.

Mikesan

correct me if I’m wrong but cant some of what you suggest be accomplished using Zoom made widgets? true its not a home screen but you can place the widgets to take over all of the space available on each screen. not to mention you can have them float on top of any app now thanks to the Overlays app by Liorry. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2215444

Andreas Ødegård

Zoom and several other apps could in theory be used to create a workaround for part of this. Problem is, it would be a workaround, and still not achieve everything, not even close. Widgets are by definition more limited than scenes, too. Then you have the issue of Zoom being outdated by ages; last time I used it I ended up sending it into an infnite crash loop.

Bottom line is that while there are many workarounds to get more Tasker features onto a launcher, nothing can truly replace one designed to do it from the ground up.

Mikesan

I agree that “tasker” widgets are more limited than scenes. but zoom is more dynamic in the sense that a zoom widget does not need to be “destroyed” before updating the contents. I could be very wrong about this as my own experience is still limited. I have not run into the infinite loop issue that you have, but i admit your system is WAY more complicated than mine…for now. ;)

Andreas Ødegård

The infinite crash loop happened when I tried to make it work with my Smartwatch. Not exactly the most common use for the app, though also the only app that went that nuts from it.

Michael

Dude,… I’d just love to be able to create some kind of Chathead system with Tasker. But I’ve never seen anyone create moveable overlay elements with Tasker… :(

Jack

I have an idea for this!

Look into Lightning Launcher on the Play store. It’s an awesome app, and the homescreen customization is just incredible.

My idea is this: you can have a scrollable sidebar (takes a bit of tweaking, but it works very well) with Lightning. With dynamic scenes in a sidebar (from one of your other articles), you could very easy make a “Tasker folder” with an icon in the sidebar, and when you press it, a scene will fly out.

For sliders on the home screen, that’s easy: just put a slider on the homescreen!

Everything you are saying would be very easy to do with Lightning Launcher. I’m going to give that a try when I have a minute.